Well my friends are heading off to AWP and I am at home with sick children. I am comforting myself with the fact that at least I might get some reading in. One of my good friends wanted me to come down to Atlanta next week. She is in charge of the poetry readings with Bly and McHugh. It would have been interesting. I have met Bly several times and he lives here in Minnesota so I am not too sad about that but I really would have like to hear Heather McHugh read.
At lunch we had this great discussion about the worst cover letters ever and some of them are so funny it is hard for me to believe someone is not trying to play a joke.
Hello, my name is ____and I was not born in America. I actually don’t like Americans and they really haven’t produced any important poetry. I am a professor of literature at ____and I teach mostly Americans, they are rude and do not care about books. I am enclosing three poems to be published in your American Magazine. You probably will not like them.
Okay this was so funny to me this weekend that I almost peed my pants. I mean I get, that as a society we have done some horrible things but man, don't you WANT to be in this review.
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7 comments:
Oh, man -- I must try this approach when submitting to "American journals" :) A question: what if such a letter (or any other rude variety) accompanied really fantastic poems? Would you overlook the letter?
In my ideal world I want to say yes but the fact is no. We can get three hundred submissions in a month and if someone is going to be rude to me or apologize for their own work then of course I can always go on to the other 299. Most of the time I don’t even read the cover letter but go right to the poems. Yet if they are on the line and the cover letter is rude then the decision is already made for me.
Ps...(which cause all my posts to go wacky) did you read Kaminsky's review in the new issue of Poetry? I am wondering what you thought of it.
You mean the March or the new April issue? I have to take a look... Didn't see the review.
Ana, April page 73, the man reviews eight books in three pages. It is easy to miss. Have you read Gogol in Rome by Katia Kapovich?
I read some (including the title poem) but not the whole book. I'd like to get my hands on the journal she edits, Fulcrum - it sounds very interesting.
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